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Nina Jo’s Shows

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Saturday Afternoon Ukulele

KC Turner Presents Bazaar Stock #8

Saturday, December 5, 2015 @ 12:00AMSat, Dec 5, 2015 @ 12:00AM

Bazaar Cafe, 5927 California St., San Francisco, CA

Here we go again. Twelve hours of unmitigated music. I go on at high noon with Jim Bruno and Hobo (buncha hippies).
All proceeds proudly go to Music In Schools Today.
Eat, drink, be merry, donate lotsa $$$ so kids can have a good music education. Guitars, not guns. Self-expression, not harmful aggression.

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I play guitar and ukulele, write songs and share them in person, on radio and online.

"I like a song that goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again.

My lyrics are mostly nonfiction because reality is so much stranger and more beautiful." ~ Nina Jo

I also love to play house concerts. Are you interested in hosting a live intimate concert from the comfort of your home? I can help make it easy and fun. Just contact me via my House Concert link on my "Shows" page.

What's New?

Happy International Women's Day (March 8)!

Please enjoy these wise and wonderful words of Sandra Cisneros as she accepts the PEN/Nabokov Literary Award today.

I've begun recording again with Martin Young, my wonderful producer in Ojai. The title of the new project is Out Of The Darkness, title track by Tom Prasada-Rao, a wonderful songwriter, guitarist, violinist and producer in his own right.

We’ve laid down guitar and vocal for The Grandmother, my requiem based on the killing of Stephon Clark by police in Sacramento. Studio time is booked for instrumental overdubs in San Francisco, overseen by Heidi Trefethen. Please stay tuned for details. This is going to be great.

Teaching

Beginning guitar and ukulele! In person or online. Why not try?

Here's what one student says:

Nina Jo is wonderful. In addition to being a gorgeous, thoughtful and politically activated singer-songwriter, she is also a patient, nurturing and motivating guitar teacher. Because of an old injury to my left hand and wrist, I thought I would never be able to play guitar in any sort of meaningful way. Nina Jo has not only taught me how to modify my playing to suit my hand, she has also shown me that such injuries do not have to hold a person back. Working with Nina Jo has given me a courage ind inspiration that I did not previously have…and my confidence continues to increase by leaps and bounds all the time. Thanks to her patience, flexibility, and genuine kindness, as well as her energy, presence and wisdom, I am absolutely loving learning to play the guitar! I cannot recommend Nina Jo highly enough.--Sam Whitehouse

Booking

Now's a good time to contact me to play a show or conduct a workshop in your area. House concerts paired with a songwriting workshop are a great fit!

I'm now a Standing O Project artist. Standing O Project is the online community that gives fans a wealth of music & interviews, and supports working musicians with a monthly income. Check it out at www.StandingOProject.com

If you like what you see & hear, and sign up as a fan or artist and please tell them I sent you!

About Nina Jo

I stole my mom's guitar at about nine years of age and taught myself to play from records, the Joan Baez songbook classic folk song book by John and and Alan Lomax. I kept this up for a good long while and started writing songs in high school. PS, I returned Mom's guitar, kids.

On New Year's Eve 1979 my brother was murdered. For a long time I couldn't even listen to music. Instead I devoted myself to martial arts, teaching self-defense and other anti-violence activism.

Twenty years later I picked up my guitar again and found I could still play and people wanted to listen. I've been picking and singing and learning ever since.

"Nina Jo Smith has written and recorded a seminal folk classic in 'Hey Songwriter'."

"This is what every songwriter feels when the song comes out of nowhere. Sure, we’re none of us 'Dylan, Taylor & Prine', but we’re fishing in the same stream, just downstream a bit. Produced by Martin Young, with Alan Thornhill on backup vocals, you’ll get goose pimples if you’ve ever wondered where some songs come from."